Thanks for replying. I personally enjoy it more without the personal ranking system. I think it stopped a lot of people from contributing for fear of public (and evident) disapproval while giving some people motivation to flood the site with low quality content just for the points. I still like the up/downvotes though but as a metric for the content, not the user.

In your own personal opinion, what’s the motivation for keeping an eye on karma? How would the experience change if you didn’t have the possibility of racking up points/karma at all?